


some of it remains

by Kangoo



Series: Front toward enemy [29]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Cayde-6's ghost (the other kind), Grief/Mourning, Haunting, M/M, as in: the state of being haunted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 11:36:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21074261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangoo/pseuds/Kangoo
Summary: A ghost isn’t something you look in the face. It’s something you see in the corner of your eye, fleeting and formless, a tangible absence just behind your shoulder. Just as much the empty space as what you think inhabits it.Razel... moves on.





	some of it remains

**Author's Note:**

> if i wrote these things in anything like a chronological order this would be the climatic end of razel's character arc or something
> 
> but it's just some pseudo-poetic emo bullshit. sike!
> 
> inspired by a red vs blue quote, nathaniel orion g.k's [ghost poems](https://nathanielorion.tumblr.com/tagged/ghost-poem) and 'grief is the thing with feathers' by max porter
> 
> title from hozier's 'as it was'.

_“The whole city is my missing him.” _

A ghost isn’t something you look in the face. It’s something you see in the corner of your eye, fleeting and formless, a tangible absence just behind your shoulder. Just as much the empty space as what you think inhabits it.

It’s hungry.

Unlike the living, a ghost’s hunger sits in the gaps of your ribcage, the dark little hole in your chest, right next to your stuttering heart. It’s large, and heavy, and cold, and it devours you from inside. It is never satiated, because it is not in the nature of ghosts to be satisfied with what little you can give them. They want absolutely, ravenously, without rest.

It’s more of a haunting than the ghost itself. Or maybe it _is_ the ghost, that hunger, maybe it’s not alien to yourself at all.

Maybe you’re the hungry one, reaching, seeking, desperate for something to sink your teeth into. Every part of you haunted and emptied out, up to the taking.

A ghost is something that takes over you. A haunting is when you ask it to.

-

Speaking of hunger: it is a driving force, not so much forward as _on_ward. Whichever way but with determination.

Razel hasn’t been hungry in a long time. He’s used to it. They called it _field hibernation_; the specific kind of hyper-focus that made him forgot everything but the razor’s edge of a sword and the tackiness of blood on exposed skin. But here it isn’t forgetfulness, or distraction. It’s fear, alien as it is. The feeling of being held up by nothing but the feeling of emptiness in and around him; as if he’d cave in otherwise, crumpling like a piece of paper, a soda can under their foot while the summer sun shines sticky-bright above their heads.

Food is comfort is companionship is love. Because he lacks one, he can’t find the energy to seek out the rest.

Even though he tries, out of habit, out of instinct, out of machine-like memory. He paces through streets and they become a shadow theater, memories cast in shifting shapes by the neon signs. Here, a regular lunch spot; there, the alley where they found a cat, once; a few feet this way and he’s at their second favorite place, for when they’ve already had spicy ramen too many times that week. Every colorful light awakens a phantom ache beneath his breastbone, a sting behind his eyes like the foreshadowing of tears.

What he’s hungry for can’t be found here.

-

Razel takes a shower and then he sits on the metal floor of his ship, between the pilot’s seat and the dashboard. It’s a small space, too small for the whole length of his body, the lankiness of his limbs. It’s a tight fit for two people, even when one of them is a ghost.

But if there’s no empty space, it doesn’t have anywhere to go but closer to him.

He curls up smaller, wraps his arms tighter around his legs. He’s so cold here. He wonders where his light goes, when it’s dark inside and out. Why it doesn’t warm him up like it used to. Maybe it’s the hunger. It devours everything, even oxygen, even flames, and it’s cold where it reaches inside his bones for the tender marrow, through his veins like frost gathering on window panes on early winter mornings.

But when he holds his breath he can feel the press of another body against his naked back, warmth seeping through his chilled body. His hair hangs limply around his face, drops of water trailing down his shoulders. He thinks about hands brushing it aside, cool metal pressed against his neck in a kiss, and pretends that’s why he’s shivering.

「Razel?」

He turns his head so his cheek rests on his knee, opens his eyes to watch Cubix through his lashes. He’s so bright in that small dark space, bright enough to dispel the shadows.

It’s an odd sort of craving that settles in their place, as familiar as the cold itself.

His back feels just as cold as the rest of him now.

-

Sometimes he forgets he’s not the only one grieving.

He finds Holliday asleep on her worktable, eyes underlined with dark circles, finds Banshee staring off into space, knowing he forgot something important and unable to put a finger on it, finds Marcus Ren and Ayin and Lek—

Find Ikora, most of all, silent in that way she gets when she’s truly sad.

Sometimes he forgets she’s lonely, too.

(Sometimes he forgets neither of them has to be.)

What does she see when she looks over the City, except the empty spaces where her friends used to be? Zavala drifting away, Osiris banished, Eris on the other side of the universe.

Cayde, dead.

And Razel…

Gone. Running away.

“We lost him,” she says, refusing to meet his eyes, “And it’s a tragedy. But I don’t want to lose you, too.”

“You won’t.”

She tilts her head, her voice impossible sad as she replies, “How can you be sure?”

He’s not. He can’t promise anything — can’t even speak through the phantom pain of a bullet lodged between his collarbones, the stutter of his heart too loud in his ears.

It’s hunger, he thinks, bitter and cloying on his tongue, like copper and battery acid, or something close.

Grief is the thing with teeth, curled around his spine and weaving through his ribs, gaping maw fitted tenderly around his heart.

-

The highest spot in the Tower is a popular meeting spot for Guardians looking for a little privacy, but the second highest is just theirs. Most people aren’t aware of it, because it’s just a little out of the way, but it overlooks the whole world, or so it seems.

His feet are dangling over the edge, over the City and its spiderweb of lights twinkling in the sunset.

The Ace of Spade rests in his lap, cradled in two bare hands like something fragile, something precious, something loved, traces the painted symbols with his finger and wonders when he’ll ever be able to see it and not think of the things he lost to it. It feels warm under his touch, heavy like a promise, familiar in the way only the things that will never truly belong to you can be. Beloved but alien to him, ill-fitted to his hand.

A ghost is less the memory than the loss itself. An unfortunate accumulation of yearning coiled in the shape of something you desperately want and dread in equal measure. This one sits next to him, just far enough not to touch, the both of them very still as if afraid it will disappear at the first sudden movement.

“It’s just three words,” Razel says, more to the wind than to himself or the person-shaped lack of something to his right. It’s easier that way. “How hard can it be?”

He rests a hand on the ground next to him, fingers splayed flat, reaching out. There’s the impression of another hand resting next to his own, the nagging feeling of a little finger that could almost be brushing against his.

_Are you going to say ‘I love you’?_ A joke at the time, the two of them grinning like idiots, standing one step down the top of the world.

He did. He said _I love you_ more times than he can count and he thinks it’ll never feel like it was enough.

It won’t fix anything now. This isn’t a curse to be banished by a true love’s kiss. He can’t undig a grave anymore than he can unshoot a bullet.

Instead he leans, ever so slightly, toward the ghost. Not enough to touch, but enough to feel less alone until he gathers himself to say,

“I forget you.”

Grief is a thing with his heart between its teeth, tearing into soft flesh, hot blood dripping down its chin, around the edge of a smile. Grief is the hungriest thing.

“I forget you. I’m letting you go.”

Razel doesn’t feel him leave.

_“I plucked one feather from my hood and left it on his forehead, for, his, head. _

_For a souvenir, for a warning, for a lick of night in the morning._

_For a little break in the mourning.”_

**Author's Note:**

> both quotes are from 'grief is the thing with feathers' (with a slight pronoun change). razel's last words are a direct quote from red vs blue. i'm unoriginal.


End file.
